The Southwest is becoming a lot more dangerous and illegal alien amnesty will make it much more so.

Let's set aside the 11 million plus Democratic votes that the amnesty for illegal aliens being pushed by McCain, Rubio, Graham, Rand Paul, etc will bring.

Let's also set aside the collapse of any lingering respect for legal immigration and the growing transformation of large parts of the United States into Mexico, culminating in Texas going blue the way that California did.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement union president Chris Crane told reporters on Wednesday that the Mexican drug cartels’ influence inside the United States has been “almost completely absent” from the immigration reform debate but needs more attention.

“I mean, if these folks coming over here taking work, we know that the drug cartels’ troops and the soldiers are all within the interior of the United States as are many other criminal elements and criminal individuals,” Crane said on a conference call with media. “There are people coming here for this to be a land of opportunity and there are people coming here because this is a target of opportunity. We believe there is a very disproportionate number of criminals coming into the United States.”

Crane also said that “the majority of people we encounter are in possession of fraudulent documents, documents such as fake Social Security cards with real U.S. citizens’ Social Security numbers on them.”

“They have fake permanent resident cards,” Crane continued. “They are involved in identity theft, which in most cases is almost definitely a state felony and definitely a violation of U.S. immigration law. But, as the agency designated to enforce these laws – ICE – we are prohibited from enforcing them. As you can imagine, we literally stack these frauds up like baseball cards. Phony Social Security cards, phony permanent resident cards – we just stack them like baseball cards. But, as officers, we are prohibited from doing anything about it.”

Crane said this administration’s political leadership, including President Barack Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and ICE director John Morton have hamstrung law enforcement agents from being able to do their jobs, and have made it impossible for ICE agents to enforce existing immigration law.

Illegal immigration from south of the border is the long tail of organized crime. And it's organized crime with international links all the way to the Middle East.

Migration isn't just people looking for jobs and social welfare in more prosperous parts of the world. It's the black market systems in lawless parts of the world extending their links deep into new markets.

“The plan of the Gang of Eight appears to be legalization, or amnesty, first, and then enforcement,” Crane said. “That’s a big problem for us. Additionally, please note that there is no mention by Senator Schumer in his statement or within the president’s immigration plan or within the bipartisan framework for stronger interior enforcement. We fully support stronger border enforcement but we know – we know – that much stronger interior enforcement is needed but continues to be ignored by the president and others because this is more about amnesty or legalization than truly addressing illegal immigration and ending it.”

Interior enforcement became a no-go a while back because the urban cities where illegal migrants proliferate also tend to have city governments in hock to their allied political leaders.

Not only do Democrats depend on the illegal alien vote, their social welfare funding depends on illegal alien clients. And they are not about to allow either to be touched.

It is an article of faith in most urban police departments that the only way to get cooperation in immigrant communities is to clarify that the police will not cooperate with immigration authorities. And that takes most options off the table. Some raids will still occasionally be carried out but the scale of the problem demands enforcement on the scale of the drug war, which would be a smarter tactic as the drug war is largely a product of immigration. But nobody who believes that amnesty is the solution is about to jump on that train.

Meanwhile the Southwest is becoming a lot more dangerous and illegal alien amnesty will make it much more so.